Important breakthrough in mole-cruiser technology

Good news for mole-cruiser fanciers today, as boffins reveal important new developments in the technology of burrowing subterranean machines. Poster art for the 70s film of At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs Traditional mole cruiser in action. The new underground locomotion tech comes from Professor Daniel Goldman …

[John Smith 19]

Good through small balls and sand.

and presumably molten magma.

Not so sure about going through rock though.

[Thomas 18]

Drones in the skies!

Spiderbots on the ground

Molebots underneath you

The pitiful human resistance will have nowhere left to shelter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the crew-less ships covering the oceans.....

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/22/actuv_contracts/

[C-N]

re: nowhere left to shelter.

I, for one, welcome our new Talpidaean-mecha-underlords.

[Greg J Preece]

The Underminer

He was only there to provide a villain for the tie-in video game - Rise of the Underminer.

[Mike 140]

I, for one, ....

welcome our molesque underlords.

[Slartybardfast]

Hmmm

.

"packed in a latex sock " - You mean a condom?

.

[MinionZero]

And it doesn't need Unobtainium

@"packed in a latex sock and wrapped in a spandex swimsuit"

Sounds like a weekend fetish thing. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

"packed in a latex sock and wrapped in a spandex swimsuit

Recreation by the El Reg Moderatrix with large pictures please or it didnt happen.

[Thomas 4]

All well and good

...but what's the supervillan angle on this piece? I can't really see it unless these things are burrowing around in a tank of quicksand; each with lasers strapped to their heads, as a besuited spy is slowly lowered in.

[Neil Milner-Harris]

So let me get this straight

Scientists thought for ages and then realised that putting a point on the forward end would make it much easier to push its way through sand, soil and other obstructions?

Pure genius.

[Luther Blissett]

Mole cruising

It is good to know it is not driving around in a large black Chelsea tractor (aka SUV) with blacked out windows looking for spring chicken.

I find that a relief.

[Bob H]

Hmmm

As fun as the concept and descriptions are...

How about filling the mole with spent nuclear waste and driving a cheap one a safe distance from a geological fault line. That was as the tectonic plate passes over the area the nuclear waste gets buried under an entire continent and recycled in the magma flows? I would imagine that the mole itself would be melted by the magma and perhaps the whole thing would get crushed to the size of a football over a few million years by which time the radioactivity has decayed into something benign?

Japan could make a new business of burying nuclear waste under China.

Bob

[Steven Roper]

Great - just what we need

And in other news, the recent volcanic eruption near Shenzhen has irradiated an area the size of Australia after it released more than 50,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste into the atmosphere, which had been buried there by Japanese burrowing machines for the past 20 years. UN secretary-general Wadda Fukizat says more than five million square miles of central Asia will be uninhabitable for at least the next 275 millennia, and we can expect to see a sharp increase in the number of two-headed goats, kittens and babies born around the world over the coming decades. More at 11.

[Msan]

Or it could provide a basis

for a probe to burrow through the ice of Europa and find out if life exists in it's under ice ocean?

[Bob H]

Woops

I read that as "under ice cream".

Clearly I need desert.